John Kinsella's Great "Milking the Tiger Snake"

John Kinsella (Photo by Michael Wilson)

John Kinsella’s brilliant “Milking the Tiger Snake” (The New Yorker, January 9, 2017) evokes a transfixing image – a bushman extracting venom from a deadly snake:

Fangs through a balloon, an orange balloon

stretched over a jam-jar mouth scrubbed-up

bush standard—fangs dripping what looks

like semen, which is venom, one of the most

deadly, down grooves and splish splash

onto the lens of the distorting glass-bottom

boat we look up into, head of tiger

snake pressed flat with the bushman’s

thumb—his scungy hat that did Vietnam,

a bandolier across his matted chest

chocked with cartridges—pistoleer

who takes out ferals with secretive

patriotic agendas. And we kids watch

him draw the head of the fierce snake,

its black body striped yellow. “It will rear

up like a cobra if cornered, and attack,

attack!” he stresses as another couple

of droplets form and plummet. And when

we say, “Mum joked leave them alone

and they’ll go home,” he retorts, “Typical

bloody woman, first to moan if she’s bit,

first to want a taste of the anti-venom

that comes of my rooting these black

bastards out, milking them dry, down

to the last drop.” Tiger snake’s eyes

peer out crazily targeting the neck

of the old coot with his dirty mouth,

its nicotine garland. He from whom

we learn, who shows us porno

and tells us what’s what. Or tiger snake

out of the wetlands, whip-cracked

by the whip of itself until its back is broke.

“Milking the Tiger Snake” is absolutely alive. What makes it so? How does Kinsella achieve his effects? One way is his use of zero articles – not “the fangs,” but “fangs”; not “the head of a tiger snake,” but “head of tiger snake”; not “the tiger snake’s eyes,” but “tiger snake’s eyes”; not “the tiger snake out of the wetlands,” but “tiger snake out of the wetlands.” Cutting the articles intensifies the image.

Another Kinsella move is his use of the present tense (“look,” “watch,” “stress,” “say,” “retorts,” “peer,” “learn,” “shows,” “tells”). Use of the present tense makes the image more immediate, direct, and impactful.

A third Kinsella technique is his use of words I can see (“fangs through a balloon, an orange balloon,” “stretched over a jam-jar mouth,” “fangs dripping what looks / like semen, which is venom,” “down grooves and splish splash / onto the lens of the distorting glass-bottom / boat,” “head of tiger / snake pressed flat with the bushman’s / thumb,” “scungy hat that did Vietnam,” “a bandolier across his matted chest / chocked with cartridges,” “the fierce snake, / its black body striped yellow,” “droplets form and plummet,” “the old coot with his dirty mouth, / its nicotine garland,” “tiger snake / out of the wetlands, whip-cracked / by the whip of itself until its back is broke”). These words jump to life as I read them.

Two more aspects of “Milking the Tiger Snake” that contribute to its vitality: (1) The rhythmic way it moves down the page, its six sentences acoustically arranged in thirty-two lines; (2) Its spontaneity; it has the feel of actual encounter, naked experience, quickly sketched as it’s happening, or immediately afterwards, while the details are still vivid. 

“Milking the Tiger Snake” is a great poem – where greatness means original, evocative, vigorous, specific, and striking. I enjoyed it immensely.